16/11/2009 - "Tarmation" by TAZ

[Hellscrag]

Map Title: Tarmation
Author: Paul "TAZ" Mader
From: Tarmation - The Tiradium Sublimation
Filename: tarmation.unr
Video Playthrough: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnPnIenSmIU



Synopsis: From the review: You are part of a research team trapped in a subterranean vault on an ice planet. For reasons unstated, a large block of ice has you stuck on the planet and the heating systems are turned off. Your goal in this map is to turn them back on to melt the ice and escape.

Discuss!

[Jet v4.3.5]

I played this map before, and liked it, but I'm gonna play it again to remember what stuck out as interesting to me, then I'll add my views.

[Buff Skeleton]

I don't see any of this "ice" here.

Seriously though, this actually looks cooler than I thought Tarmation was supposed to be. I never played it, but now I will have to check it out.

[UB_]

Far better and less confusing than its "hey editor let's play with 50 themes" sequel. It's also a fairly long map.

Only the first area is in an ice pit, but you'll quickly go in these foggy, warm areas. Great architecture and lighting, although I remember some bugs like falling through a floor or something else. Quite the real maze, Skaarj here and here, some traps (I think) and... I don't remember much more since I played it one time. But I really liked it.
TAZ needed to do more maps, unless I missed other ones just under my nose.

[Hellscrag]

He did a couple of good-looking UT DM maps... DM-Hydrophobia and (IIRC) DM-Vocant][.

[Jet v4.3.5]

Pretty good map for : 1-the time it was made. That really stood out to me. For a map of that time where first-time level developers were really looking into the editor and all of its fantastic new abilities, this map shows signs of being a very rough and plainer shadow of what most experienced mappers make on the Ed today. 2-the theme was very hellish. Fire, red-orange crystals on the walls, lava in a number of places, very pointy geometry in some areas, and a large fiery melting chamber guarded by mercenaries (fits?) and a big fire titan. 3-parts of gameplay. I'm not really going to go into this, because it's not all good, but I partially liked the rising floor trap.

On the other hand, there were a few number of bad things such as the ghost walkway to the ASMD, the occasional misaligned texture, and the fact that you were given access to an area after the simple melting of four small crystals of tarydium. Access would be given to an authorized person, not to someone who decided to melt something in the tarydium melting vat. But on the whole, the map does shine in its own ways of being generally better than the majority of maps at the time, though not completely up there, it's still a good map, and I enjoyed playing through it.

[nikosv]

Conceptual grandness gets a 10. Loved this map. It, and Liberation of Na Pali, are my two favorite one-map packs. Strangely, neither of the two are very well received nowadays.

[salsaSkaarj]

I thought I would remember Tarmation (not a common name) but the screenshots didn't ring a bell so I played it and I'm sure I must have played it before but I still can't remember a thing.
Conceptual grandness is there but to give this a 10 is an insult to other maps, 8 should suffice. Gameplay on the other hand has stood the test of time well, it's not overly easy, nor hard but enemy placement is such that there will be lots of surprises the first time which make it an interesting level. There's more anticipation of action than action itself but it creates a special atmoshpere in the correct way (also helped by the trap).

IMHO it's a map which shows a lot of what can be done with Unreal in terms of geometry and as such deserves a place in the history of early Unreal maps.

[Darkon]

I remember the review.. and as far as I remember the review wasn't that positive about Tarmation. I also remember playing it though and wondering why the review was so negative.. I fairly enjoyed it!

(I think Tarmation II wasn't that great, but that's not the topic here.)

[zbreaker]

Tarmation was and still is an excellent map given the era it was made in..the second one definitely fell short of the mark though imho.

[nikosv]

I think I like maps like this (Liberation for Na Pali falling in the same category) because they remind me of Myst and Riven. There's no need to hurry, it's expected that there will be very little interaction between the player and the opposition, and the main focus is solving problems and gaping at the conceptual grandness which is swallowing you whole.

Sure, Tarmation is obviously aging pretty badly, but the "wow factor" can still be felt.

[Turboman]

Wow, alot of love for this map here

I somehow never got into this map, the first time i played through it was a mediocre experience, but after many time through this map in coop i got to like it even less.
I found the visuals to be very impressive, but suffering under monotony, everything has the same dull look, particulary evident with the lighting which is the same in every place.
Gameplay was hardly fun, enemies have problems getting around the place and combat wasn't challenging.

I found tarmation2 to be a major improvement over the first one, not only the theme but its alot more exciting to play as well. (imo)


Anyway still a plus for the author doing something different then the usual.

[Semfry]

The theme is obviously the thing that sticks out here, and in that regard it's surreal enough that very little has come close, simply because it's doing something entirely different from most maps. Although there are some optimisation issues (probably a fog thing), as there's no way a ten year old map should be going at around 8 FPS in one or two areas.

The gameplay is pretty simple (although the couple of moments of non-linearity are nice), but it works well enough, outside of a couple of things like the switch in the middle of the elevator that can go up again, meaning you have to wait a minute or so to get it back down. It could also have done with an extension of the ice theme, since the second map goes in another direction entirely. While it's more based around gimmicks than an overall solid experience it's still work checking out for the uniqueness.